Auto racing: Shank pursuing repeat at Daytona

The green flag will drop on the Rolex 24 at Daytona auto race just after 3 p.m. Saturday, but Michael Shank said the clock starts ticking tonight.

Tim May, The Columbus Dispatch

The green flag will drop on the Rolex 24 at Daytona auto race just after 3 p.m. Saturday, but Michael Shank said the clock starts ticking tonight.

“There is a critical time period when it comes to this race, and it starts on Thursday night after qualifying, when we change our motors and our gear boxes and put our race stuff in the cars,” said Shank, who owns the defending champion team. “During that transition, the car is in a million pieces, like we’ve just started to put it together all over again.

“Putting it back together, if you miss one little thing, you’re done. The grind of a 24-hour race will find it, which means all that work to get there, it’s over. To get everyone to settle down and focus on the task — Thursday night is actually when the race starts.”

He wasn’t reading that from a how-to manual. Shank, whose expansive headquarters for Michael Shank Racing is located in a business park off Rt. 40 in Pataskala, has taken his team to Daytona for a 10th straight year.

In 2006, it finished second. In 2008, it swept the top two starting spots. It has had a car lead laps almost every year.

Then came last year, when Ozz Negri, AJ Allmendinger, Justin Wilson and John Pew took turns driving the team’s No. 60 Ford-Riley prototype to victory. And two spots behind them was the team’s other entry, the No. 6 car driven by Michael McDowell and what were then three Daytona rookies: Felipe Nasr, Jorge Goncalvez and Gustavo Yacaman.

Shank has gotten the gangs back together, with the addition of NASCAR veteran Marcos Ambrose for the No. 60 car, since it wasn’t clear until this week that Negri — who recently suffered a leg injury — would be OK to drive.

“We’ve got world-class drivers, guys who have a ton of experience, and guys who know how to take care of the car but also have the ability to hustle it when they need to,” Shank said.

But just as important is the crew, headed up by lead engineer Dale Wise and crew chiefs Darin Pigg and Justin Harnisfager. It’s their attention to detail that has Shank feeling confident going in as defending champ.

“It feels like I’m going to go do it again,” Shank said. “Now I know in terms of pure odds, in terms of repeating, the Ganassi team has done it (three straight from 2006 to 2008), and a few others (have repeated) — but from the pure odds standpoint, it’s against us.

“All I can do is tell our guys, ‘We’ve done it. We know what it takes. We can do it again.”

Shank said that last year’s victory put him, his co-owner and wife, MaryBeth, and the team on the racing map.

“It’s the respect that came from it, the due respect I don’t think the guys on my team had truly gotten that I always thought they deserved,” Michael Shank said. “That is one of what I would say are the five most prestigious races in the world, and when you get that on your résumé, it — for whatever reason — ticks the bell. Winning it changed my life, it really did. It’s the best thing that has happened in my professional career.

“But listen, we’re not any less hungry because of that. We’re going about this to win it again, because the only thing better than winning it once would be winning it twice.”